Probably the easiest and most accessible way for you to keep track of websites you have visited is by using Favourites on your web browser - but what if you are sometimes working at home and on other occasions working at school or at the Library?
ONENOTE
In today's world of information overload, it can be hard to track where you saw something on the web. You start researching and find 10 or 20 relevant links. You could build a bookmark folder for the pages, but bookmark folders quickly become overwhelming in numbers and scope.
OneNote offers a number of better options. Each of these options allow you to check the content, remember the links, annotate and make notes about what you found, and find it all later.
There are 3 features of OneNote that are useful in doing web research:
Screen Clippings
Print to OneNote
Copy and Paste
Screen Clippings
You can take notes and capture web pages of information with OneNote’s Insert Screen Clipping feature. When you copy and paste anything from web pages—generally, inserting a screen clip is the best way to do this—the pasted material appears with the source link as the reference, making it easy for you to keep track of sources for your research paper citations.
The screen clipping button is on the insert tab:
Clicking this tab hides OneNote, dims the screen behind it, and allows to select the area to be clipped. Click and drag across the page to activate the clipping.
When you release the mouse button, the clipped content is immediately added to your notes page at the current cursor location. That screen clipping was taken from an IE browser page, so it not only added the logo, but OneNote also automatically added the name of the page, the URL, and the date and time of the screen clipping. (When clipping from Chrome or Firefox, you will get the image and the date and time line.)
There are two potential problems with using a screen clipping to grab your web content. One problem is that you get an image of the page, not the actual content of the page. (You can right click the image and copy the text from it, but it is an extra step.) The other problem is that you can grab no more than one screen of content with each clipping.
When you need an exact copy of a full page, use Print to OneNote. This option allows you to send the page directly to any page in any of your OneNote notebooks. Printing your notes is done just as you would to any other printer. From any application, bring up the Print dialog and select the OneNote printer. OneNote will open (if it isn't already) and ask you where you want the printout to go:
Select the page or section for this printout. If the page already exists, OneNote will put the print out at the bottom of the page. If you just select a section for your destination, the printout will go at the top of a new page.
When the printout is added to your notes, it will look like a PDF printed to your notes. Each page will have a header, an image of the content, and a footer. Each page will be an individual graphic.
The second way to grab content from a web page while researching is to copy and paste the actual page from the site to your notes. In this case, OneNote will annotate the content with the URL (no matter what browser you are using). When using copy and paste, you will get the text and the links from the page, but (depending on how the site was built) you may not get the graphics for the page. The content will be in the order that it was when you saw it in your browser.
Bonus: If you use FireFox as your default browser, there is an add-in available called "Clip to OneNote".
Dock OneNote
No matter how you plan to get the content into OneNote, start by docking OneNote to the side of the desktop. To dock OneNote, go to the View tab. Click "Dock to Desktop":
This creates a narrower version of your OneNote interface, which you can work on while visiting sites. As you adjust the width of your note page, the width of your notes will adjust equivalently.
One big advantage of docking OneNote with IE pages: OneNote will automatically link your notes to the URL you were on while you took the notes.
DIIGO
Diigo excels as a research tool:
Students can save relevant websites to lists in their Diigo student accounts. Each saved bookmark captures the URL and a screenshot, and can be searched later.
Students can highlight important information right on the website, using Diigo. Later, when students return to the website, they find the reason they saved the bookmark in the first place.
Students can use virtual sticky notes to summarize the important points of information from the website. This activity will mimic the time-tested procedure of using note cards to summarize and organize research projects.
Students working on similar topics can create and join groups in order to collaborate.
Later, when students need to document their sources, Diigo can be used to recall website URLs for citing sources.
Personal Student Bookmarks
One common problem of student computer use in schools is access to student work from home. Not every school provides a way for students to access their school data. In such cases, if students create bookmarks at school, they will not have access from other computers.
Using Diigo, students can bookmark important websites and access them from school, home, the library or any internet-connected computer. Students will always have access to this data.
Bookmark Lists
Teachers and students can use the group and list features of Diigo to organize bookmarks on themes or topics. Classes can also collaborate and discuss information within Diigo.
For example, teachers who have more than one section of a class can initiate collaboration among all their sections. Students can use Diigo to create annotations on useful websites, and save the websites to groups or lists. Other students, even in other sections, can see the annotations made by other students. Students can even comment and respond to others. Here, Diigo creates a communication channel between sections that would otherwise not be easy to create.
EVERNOTE may be your choice if you have a Mac computer and use an ipad/iphone extensively for research . OneNote is not included in the Mac version of Office, but Microsoft has released mobile apps for iPhone and iPad.
Evernote opened to the public in final form in 2008, and it has since grown quickly to 20 million users. Evernote can store all kinds of information in notes, including Web clippings and attached files as well as audio and video notes. With desktop apps for Windows and OSX, full-featured mobile apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and WebOS, and a strong Web app, Evernote’s best feature may be its cross-platform compatibility. It’s also free however you can pay for extra features.
Organization and Reference Tools
One of the biggest differences between OneNote and EverNote is in the way they organize your notes--an important factor for choosing one, as the way you access the stored information will have the most impact on the way you work. Organization in Evernote is three levels deep--notebook stacks, notebooks, and notes--leaving you to rely more on tags and searching to keep things organized and find notes later. Evernote runs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to enable searching text in attached documents and ink notes on its server.
PINTEREST
Social media has brought a revolution in the way we do things, the way we see things, and the way we seek information. It has made us "savvier" and more aware of things happening around us, and depending on the way you use social media, it can become your trusted confidante or another app you end up wasting tons of time on.
Because social media has also affected the way assignments, research papers, and examination prep is done, students should know how to use it constructively, in such a way that helps them complete these tasks in the best way possible.
One of the most useful, and perhaps the most interesting, applications for students, teachers, and parents is Pinterest. The Pinterest platform is a visual pin board that allows users to pin images from blogs and websites, making it easier for them to refer to these later.
What bookmarking tools could you use?
Table of Contents
ONENOTE
In today's world of information overload, it can be hard to track where you saw something on the web. You start researching and find 10 or 20 relevant links. You could build a bookmark folder for the pages, but bookmark folders quickly become overwhelming in numbers and scope.OneNote offers a number of better options. Each of these options allow you to check the content, remember the links, annotate and make notes about what you found, and find it all later.
There are 3 features of OneNote that are useful in doing web research:
Screen Clippings
You can take notes and capture web pages of information with OneNote’s Insert Screen Clipping feature. When you copy and paste anything from web pages—generally, inserting a screen clip is the best way to do this—the pasted material appears with the source link as the reference, making it easy for you to keep track of sources for your research paper citations.The screen clipping button is on the insert tab:
Clicking this tab hides OneNote, dims the screen behind it, and allows to select the area to be clipped. Click and drag across the page to activate the clipping.
When you release the mouse button, the clipped content is immediately added to your notes page at the current cursor location. That screen clipping was taken from an IE browser page, so it not only added the logo, but OneNote also automatically added the name of the page, the URL, and the date and time of the screen clipping. (When clipping from Chrome or Firefox, you will get the image and the date and time line.)
There are two potential problems with using a screen clipping to grab your web content. One problem is that you get an image of the page, not the actual content of the page. (You can right click the image and copy the text from it, but it is an extra step.) The other problem is that you can grab no more than one screen of content with each clipping.
Capturing a Screen Clip in OneNote from Lee Reed on Vimeo.
Print to OneNote
When you need an exact copy of a full page, use Print to OneNote. This option allows you to send the page directly to any page in any of your OneNote notebooks. Printing your notes is done just as you would to any other printer. From any application, bring up the Print dialog and select the OneNote printer. OneNote will open (if it isn't already) and ask you where you want the printout to go:
Select the page or section for this printout. If the page already exists, OneNote will put the print out at the bottom of the page. If you just select a section for your destination, the printout will go at the top of a new page.When the printout is added to your notes, it will look like a PDF printed to your notes. Each page will have a header, an image of the content, and a footer. Each page will be an individual graphic.
Printing directly into OneNote 2010 from Lee Reed on Vimeo.
Copy and Paste
The second way to grab content from a web page while researching is to copy and paste the actual page from the site to your notes. In this case, OneNote will annotate the content with the URL (no matter what browser you are using). When using copy and paste, you will get the text and the links from the page, but (depending on how the site was built) you may not get the graphics for the page. The content will be in the order that it was when you saw it in your browser.Bonus: If you use FireFox as your default browser, there is an add-in available called "Clip to OneNote".
Dock OneNote
No matter how you plan to get the content into OneNote, start by docking OneNote to the side of the desktop. To dock OneNote, go to the View tab. Click "Dock to Desktop":This creates a narrower version of your OneNote interface, which you can work on while visiting sites. As you adjust the width of your note page, the width of your notes will adjust equivalently.
One big advantage of docking OneNote with IE pages: OneNote will automatically link your notes to the URL you were on while you took the notes.
DIIGO
Diigo excels as a research tool:
Personal Student Bookmarks
One common problem of student computer use in schools is access to student work from home. Not every school provides a way for students to access their school data. In such cases, if students create bookmarks at school, they will not have access from other computers.Using Diigo, students can bookmark important websites and access them from school, home, the library or any internet-connected computer. Students will always have access to this data.
Bookmark Lists
Teachers and students can use the group and list features of Diigo to organize bookmarks on themes or topics. Classes can also collaborate and discuss information within Diigo.For example, teachers who have more than one section of a class can initiate collaboration among all their sections. Students can use Diigo to create annotations on useful websites, and save the websites to groups or lists. Other students, even in other sections, can see the annotations made by other students. Students can even comment and respond to others. Here, Diigo creates a communication channel between sections that would otherwise not be easy to create.
Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.
DIIGO Groups
EVERNOTE
EVERNOTE may be your choice if you have a Mac computer and use an ipad/iphone extensively for research . OneNote is not included in the Mac version of Office, but Microsoft has released mobile apps for iPhone and iPad.Evernote opened to the public in final form in 2008, and it has since grown quickly to 20 million users. Evernote can store all kinds of information in notes, including Web clippings and attached files as well as audio and video notes. With desktop apps for Windows and OSX, full-featured mobile apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and WebOS, and a strong Web app, Evernote’s best feature may be its cross-platform compatibility. It’s also free however you can pay for extra features.
Organization and Reference Tools
One of the biggest differences between OneNote and EverNote is in the way they organize your notes--an important factor for choosing one, as the way you access the stored information will have the most impact on the way you work. Organization in Evernote is three levels deep--notebook stacks, notebooks, and notes--leaving you to rely more on tags and searching to keep things organized and find notes later. Evernote runs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to enable searching text in attached documents and ink notes on its server.PINTEREST
Social media has brought a revolution in the way we do things, the way we see things, and the way we seek information. It has made us "savvier" and more aware of things happening around us, and depending on the way you use social media, it can become your trusted confidante or another app you end up wasting tons of time on.Because social media has also affected the way assignments, research papers, and examination prep is done, students should know how to use it constructively, in such a way that helps them complete these tasks in the best way possible.
One of the most useful, and perhaps the most interesting, applications for students, teachers, and parents is Pinterest. The Pinterest platform is a visual pin board that allows users to pin images from blogs and websites, making it easier for them to refer to these later.
Pinterest Basics
How To Pinterest from Braid Creative on Vimeo.